Going around the universe in star trek is an easy feat. It is like ‘firing up the warp drive and leaving for the next adventure. However, in reality, it is more tedious in the absence of faster than light travels.
Physicists have been working to obtain a framework for the real warp drive for years now. Only now has it seen some considerable development where a vision for warp drive has been laid out that might actually work. It is still unknown how to go about its production phase, although what is known now is why we can’t build it. And this makes a considerable development in the field.
Let’s assume humans want to travel to Proxima Centauri, termed the closest of all alien solar systems. It is said to be four light-years away from earth, making it trillions of kilometers away from us or even more. It doesn’t even really matter calculating the distance given how far it is. The current technology would take an infinite time or millions of years to reach there, but if, we the humans, have the technology to travel faster than the speed of light, we could reach there like it was never a problem!
The major problem catered here is physics, which believes that nothing can go faster than the speed of light. To beat this is the only way to get to Proxima Centauri.
A known theoretical physicist Miguel Alcubierre proposed a model for a warp drive vessel in 1994. His model didn’t violate the universe’s laws, but for completion, it asked for exotic negative energy, which was and is impossible to obtain.
However, as per the latest on the subject, a new paper was published by the physicists Gianni Martire and Alexey Bobrick that made the rounds on the internet and the world of physics. It stated that it is possible to reach to produce a physical warp drive. Their study has now been reviewed and published in the ‘Journal classic and Quantum Gravity.’
In contrast to the Alcubierre Drive, the Bobrick Martire drive doesn’t require un-reachable amounts of negative energy. The paper doesn’t focus on going deep down a vessel. Instead, a bubble of space-time could gather around a vessel, person, or anything with a mass.
The proposed bubble to be created could accelerate faster than light, and it would seem the same to outside observers. However, the ones inside the bubble would feel the same form of physics laws as observed in a normal state. The passenger area would completely consist of flat spacetime.
The prime researchers broke down the study in pieces when it gained much popularity over the internet a few months back.
There still lies many problems with the build idea. So it is advised you shouldn’t start packing up for space already. It is still unknown how to make an effective ‘space-time bubble,’ while the balance of the matter and energy distribution is still under question. Researchers believe that even if some miracle happens in coming times and a ‘space-time bubble’ is produced, it is still known how to accelerate it effectively. It is a complex matter, as something as small as the way passengers are sitting in the warp bubble could change the asking amount of energy.
The key advancement is that the Bobrick-Martire drive lays down stronger mathematical grounds for studying the possibility of space travel. Physicists who criticize ‘silly space travel’ ideas have approved the study to gain something fruitful from it in the future. In the series ‘Star-trek,’ warp drive wasn’t developed until the year 2063, which leaves us many years to find the perfect fit answers for successful space travels at a speed that beats the speed of light.